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"More than a proper church, I want a Prodigal Church, running into the world with wasteful gifts of love and mercy and understanding and justice."

3/31/2019

A PRODIGAL CHURCH

First Congregational Church of Cheshire
Sunday, March 31, 2019 – Lent 4
© the Rev. Dr. James Campbell

Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32

Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to him. And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.” So he told them this parable:

Then Jesus said, “There was a man who had two sons. The younger of them said to his father, ‘Father, give me the share of the property that will belong to me.’ So he divided his property between them. A few days later the younger son gathered all he had and traveled to a distant country, and there he squandered his property in dissolute living. When he had spent everything, a severe famine took place throughout that country, and he began to be in need. So he went and hired himself out to one of the citizens of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed the pigs. He would gladly have filled himself with the pods that the pigs were eating; and no one gave him anything. But when he came to himself he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired hands have bread enough and to spare, but here I am dying of hunger! I will get up and go to my father, and I will say to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son; treat me like one of your hired hands.”’ So he set off and went to his father. But while he was still far off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion; he ran and put his arms around him and kissed him. Then the son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’ But the father said to his slaves, ‘Quickly, bring out a robe—the best one—and put it on him; put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. And get the fatted calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate; for this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found!’ And they began to celebrate. “Now his elder son was in the field; and when he came and approached the house, he heard music and dancing. He called one of the slaves and asked what was going on. He replied, ‘Your brother has come, and your father has killed the fatted calf, because he has got him back safe and sound.’ Then he became angry and refused to go in. His father came out and began to plead with him. But he answered his father, ‘Listen! For all these years I have been working like a slave for you, and I have never disobeyed your command; yet you have never given me even a young goat so that I might celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours came back, who has devoured your property with prostitutes, you killed the fatted calf for him!’ Then the father said to him, ‘Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. But we had to celebrate and rejoice, because this brother of yours was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found.’”

+++

I have a friend who hates this story. He hates it because he was always a good son.  He was the one who stayed close to his parents and did what they needed as they aged.  Meanwhile, his brother was off cavorting and partying and spending time in prison and generally breaking his parents’ hearts.  My friend saw, up close and personal, the pain that his brother caused. And so, when he reads this story, what he sees is the unfairness of it all.  And it pushes his buttons.  And he hates it.

I was a little taken aback when he first told me this.  But the more I think about it, the more I think that his reaction to this story is more appropriate than most. This parable of Jesus is not supposed to be sweet. It’s meant to provoke us – like it provokes my friend.

This story is introduced with these words: “Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to (Jesus). And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, "This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them."  And that introduction tells us exactly who Jesus is trying to provoke with this tale: the religious establishment; in our day the church.

Once upon a time, Jesus said, there was a man who had two sons.  The younger son, more than a little spoiled, wanted his share of the inheritance before his father died.  This was a shocking request.  Since money was never distributed before a death, it was like walking right up to his father, staring him in the eye, and saying: “Drop dead, old man.”

So that was painful, but so was this: the young man also had no regard for the larger community that would have been adversely affected by the parceling and sale of the land.  You see large farms were the basis of ancient economies.  To divide them was to weaken them and thus weaken the economy.

Additionally, “the sale (of the land) itself was a shameful thing”[1]from a religious point of view, because the land was seen as God’s gift to a family.  And that land was to be preserved from one generation to the next because God had given it to them.  To sell it was to turn your nose up at the gift of God; to turn back on the covenant.

But even if none of that was true, it’s still hard to like the younger son.  His misfortune was his own fault.  He took his money and ran to a distant country, where he spent it on drugs and booze and parties and sex.  And then, when it was all gone, all wasted, a severe famine caused the collapse of the economy.  The only job he could get was slopping the hogs – about as low as a good Jewish boy could go.  But it got worse.  He was so hungry that the pig slop started to look pretty good.  And so there he was, a once rich young man, down in the trough with the swine. And then, and only then, was he sorry for all the pain he had caused.

Desperation makes all of us inventive. And so, the young man began to think of home and all the comforts he’d left behind.  He knew that his father’s servants lived way better than this.  And so, he swallowed his pride and put his tail between his legs and set out on his journey home, determined to live as a hired hand on the estate he once helped to rule.

While he was still far away, his father saw him coming, which makes me wonder if the old man didn’t sit in a tower all day scanning the horizon, hoping against hope that his son would come home.

And then Jesus said a very strange thing.  Jesus said that the father ran out to meet the son.  And at that, the crowd gasped because now Jesus was messing with gender roles. The social norms of the day would have required the father to maintain his dignity, no matter what.  The father would never leave the house to meet any child, let alone a wayward one. Instead, the father would stay put and force the son to humble himself by coming in to see the father. Scholars suggest that running out to meet the son was actually something a mother would do – but never a father.

When the father reached his son, he embraced and kissed him, despite the god-awful smell and the ritual uncleanness of having been with pigs.  The son started to apologize, but it was as if the father couldn’t or didn’t want to hear him.  Instead, talking over him, he ordered the servants: “Bring out the best robe we have and put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet.  And kill the fatted calf and let’s have a party.  For my son, who was as good as dead to me, has come back to life.”

Not that’s a lovely ending, except, of course, that it’s not the end.  The older brother came in from yet another hard day of work, after a lifetime of hard days of work, saw the party and was immediately filled with a sense of having been wronged.  He had never left home.  He had always worked hard.  He had never broken his father’s heart.  And his no-good brother waltzes back into the family’s life as if nothing had ever happened. “It’s not fair”, the older son complained bitterly.  And he’s right.  It’s not. But it is compassionate.  And it is mercifulAnd when we are choosing for ourselves, which would we rather have when we’ve made a mess of things?

Some people have suggested that this parable should actually be called “The Prodigal Father” because, if you think about it, the father was just as extravagant and wasteful as his son.  He poured out his love as if there is no end to it.  And if the father is supposed to represent God, which is the traditional interpretation, then there is a lot of comfort in the notion of a God who is extravagant with mercy, love and compassion – precisely when we don’t deserve it.

But while we say the father figure is supposed to represent God, Jesus never said that.  Jesus’s parables are purposefully ambiguous so that we can draw our own conclusions.  Theologian Margaret Aymer writes that the father figure could also be interpreted as the church. She says that because remember that Jesus told this story in reaction to the religious authorities who wanted to keep a tight control on how Jesus did his ministry. And if the father in this story is a representation of the church, then notice where this extravagant love is actually poured out upon the wayward son.  It’s not in the house of the father, where he was in control.  It’s in the street.  Which makes me wonder, why we imagine that the most important things we do happen inside the fortress of this building?  What would it look like if we ran to meet the world instead of waiting for the world to come into our house?

Consider this: On Ash Wednesday this year, more than 270 people drove through Church Drive to receive the mark of their mortality and a prayer of blessing.  More than 270.  Some of them wept.  Many of them thanked us profusely.  -- That evening, about 50 of us gathered in this sanctuary for worship. 270 outside the building, 50 inside the building.  What does that say?  And if we can take ashes out of the church and literally into the street; if we can, like the father in the parable, run out to meet people where they actually are – then what else can we do out there?

Well, here’s some of what we’re thinking: on Palm Sunday there will be a donkey named Star out on the Green.  And there will be a big media push to let the children of Cheshire know that.  Our Palm Sunday liturgy will not start in here, but out there, on Route 10, with a donkey and a robed choir and vested ministers and palm branches and music and proclamation and children and all of you. We will take our liturgy out on the street.

Or consider this: we’re working on an event called “The Blessing of the Backpacks,” an interfaith gathering on the Green to bless all of the children of this town as they go back to school next fall.  At the same time, we’ll be collecting new backpacks for school kids in next-door Waterbury.  That too is church on the streets.  But why should we stop there? Would it be too much, too risky, too improper to offer people communion on the streets or in their cars?  Or prayers for healing?  Or a blessing for people’s pets? Or outdoor summer worship?  Or a town-wide picnic?

I don’t say any of this naturally because I’m a church nerd and I love what we do in this room.  But what I love more is meeting people where they actually are. More than a proper church, I want a Prodigal Church, running into the world with wasteful gifts of love and mercy and understanding and justice.

[1]http://www.ucc.org/weekly_seeds_embracing_love_2019, accessed on March 25, 2019

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MOTHER JESUS

3/17/2019

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Sunday, March 17, 2019 – Lent 2
© the Rev. Dr. James Campbell

Luke 13:31-35

At that very hour some Pharisees came and said to him, “Get away from here, for Herod wants to kill you.” He said to them, “Go and tell that fox for me, ‘Listen, I am casting out demons and performing cures today and tomorrow, and on the third day I finish my work. Yet today, tomorrow, and the next day I must be on my way, because it is impossible for a prophet to be killed outside of Jerusalem.’ Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing! See, your house is left to you. And I tell you, you will not see me until the time comes when you say, ‘Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.’”

I distinctly remember the first time I ever heard someone refer to God as Mother.  I was a college student in small town Indiana and periodically attended the local United Methodist church.  “God language” was in the news a lot back then, with the Methodist bishop of that area creating quite a stir by referring to God as Mother.  One Sunday the pastor of that local church preached a sermon defending the bishop’s statement.  And then he led us in the Lord’s Prayer with these words, “Our Mother who art in heaven…”  I remember that I didn’t like that very much.

About the same time, there was an article in Newsweek Magazine about a controversial crucifix on display in the Episcopal Cathedral of Saint John the Divine in New York.  It was called “Christa” and portrayed a naked woman hanging on a cross.  I remember I didn’t like that very much either. In fact, I didn’t like it so much that I wrote a rather heated letter to the editor.  Thank God they never published it!

Talking about God as Mother is less controversial than it used to be.  We understand language to be a product of one’s time.  And we’ve also learned a lot about the Bible’s original languages and how those languages refer to the divine using both male and female imagery. For example, the Hebrew name for God “el Shaddai” can easily be translated as “the many breasted one” – a poetic way to say that God gives nurture to all of her children.

But Jesus was a biological male, right? And so we refer to Jesus as our Lord and our Brother.  But Jesus as a mother?  That’s just seems weird.  But a few years ago I learned about how the concept of Jesus as Mother is actually a very old one.  In the mystical theology of the High Middle Ages, Jesus as our Mother was popularized by such monumental figures in Christian history as Bernard of Clairvaux, Julian of Norwich, Hildegard of Bingen, and Meister Eckhart.  Where did they get such an idea?  Well, at least in part, from the Gospel lesson that Pastor Alison just read.

One day, and quite out of character, the Pharisees came to warn Jesus that Herod wanted to kill him. It was a chance for Jesus to run away and escape. But Jesus didn’t run and hide.  Instead he replied rather provocatively: “Go and tell that fox for me, ‘Listen, I am casting out demons and performing cures today and tomorrow, and on the third day I finish my work.”– a reference to the Crucifixion. In calling Herod a fox, Jesus was implicating him in murder and mayhem.  Foxes were thought of as bloodthirsty and always looking for an easy kill, like in a henhouse.

Jesus ran with that association in what has become his famous lament over the city of Jerusalem.  And I want you to pay particular attention to how he talks about himself. “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it!  How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hengathers herbrood under herwings, but you were not willing.”

This week I watched a YouTube video of a hen protecting her chicks.  And it’s just as Jesus described it.  The mother lifts her wings and the chicks run underneath them.  And then she folds her wings back into place with the babies safely underneath.  If a threat comes too close, she will peck and make noise and stand her ground.  A mother hen can be fierce that way. But at the end of the day, if the aggressor is stronger than she, then all she really has to protect her chicks is her own body.  She places herself between the danger and the ones she loves.

That’s just what mothers do.  The tragic history of our world is filled with the stories of self-sacrificing mothers.  Sometimes mothers stand in the way of bullets – like those in the New Zealand mosques desperately trying to shield their children.  Sometimes they lay over their children during earthquakes. Sometimes mothers hoist their children to dry ground even as they themselves drown.  The mother preserves the life of her children no matter what.

It was Herod’s job to keep the peace with Rome.  But it was Jesus’s job to challenge the oppression of Rome.  So the old fox, in order to keep his power, was determined to kill the mother hen and gobble up her chicks.

In some popular American Christianity, Jesus is portrayed as some sort of macho superhero.  Those folks would have us believe that Jesus could have chosen to kill his enemies on Good Friday, but instead, in complete superhero self-control, he choses death.  But that is not the way Luke tells this story. Instead, Luke shows us Jesus, vulnerable and human, hurtling his body against the systems of evil in order to protect the chicks.

The great preacher Barbara Brown Taylor writes beautifully of this passage, and I quote “Jesus won’t be king of the jungle in this or any other story. What he will be is a mother hen, who stands between the chicks and those who mean to do them harm.  She has no fangs, no claws, no rippling muscles.  All she has is her willingness to shield her babies with her own body.  If the fox wants them, he will have to kill her first.  Which he does, as it turns out.  He slides up on her one night in the yard while all the babies are asleep. When her cries waken them, they scatter. She dies the next day where both foxes and chickens can see her – wings spread, breast exposed, without a single chick beneath her wings.”[1]

The Gospel’s power is counter-intuitive precisely because it is not now, nor has it ever been, about brute strength or political power or the accumulation of riches.  That’s how we think of power, sinful as we are.  But the Gospel of the Hen is all about sacrificial love.  It’s about putting yourself between the slobbering foxes of this world and those least able to protect themselves.

That’s what Jesus did.  That’s what any mother would do.

[1]https://www.religion-online.org/article/as-a-hen-gathers-her-brood/

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LED RIGHT INTO THE MIDDLE OF TEMPTATION

3/10/2019

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Sunday, March 10, 2019 – Lent 1
© the Rev. Dr. James Campbell

Luke 4:1-13

Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness, where for forty days he was tempted by the devil. He ate nothing at all during those days, and when they were over, he was famished. The devil said to him, ‘If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become a loaf of bread.’ Jesus answered him, ‘It is written, “One does not live by bread alone.” ’

Then the devil led him up and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. And the devil said to him, ‘To you I will give their glory and all this authority; for it has been given over to me, and I give it to anyone I please. If you, then, will worship me, it will all be yours.’ Jesus answered him, ‘It is written,
“Worship the Lord your God,
   and serve only him.” ’

Then the devil took him to Jerusalem, and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple, saying to him, ‘If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here, for it is written,
“He will command his angels concerning you,
   to protect you”,
  and
“On their hands they will bear you up,
   so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.” ’
Jesus answered him, ‘It is said, “Do not put the Lord your God to the test.” ’ When the devil had finished every test, he departed from him until an opportune time.

+++

Do you believe in the devil? That’s a very different question than do you believe in God?  Believing in God is still, at least partly, acceptable in our world. But if you espouse a belief in the devil, well, some folks might think you’re crazy.

Despite that, the popular image is still around.  We speak of the devil on one shoulder and an angel on the other, trying to convince us to choose the bad or the good. We say things like “the devil made me do it.” When I was kid that was even a popular thing to see on tee shirts thanks to the comedian Flip Wilson and his character Geraldine, who was always trying to resist temptation and always failing and always saying: “The devil made me do it.”

And so we giggle and pass the buck to an imaginary little red man with horns and a pitchfork because that is so much easier than seriously considering what might be at stake when we are tempted.

According to Scripture, temptations and their consequences are very real, nothing to joke about.  They are so real that Jesus himself taught us to pray: “Lead us not into temptation.” And that makes the story we heard today especially strange because according to the story, the polar opposite happened to Jesus. Jesus was led into temptation by the Holy Spirit.  Isn’t that odd?

So why would the Spirit of God lead Jesus into temptation.  A clue is found in the Greek word translated here as “temptation.”  Remember that translations are often editorial choices.  And this word can just as easily be translated as “test.”  And to say that Jesus was led into a “time of testing” as opposed to a “time of temptation” implies that there was a goal or purpose to this test that might have been worthwhile.

So, the Spirit led Jesus into the wilderness in order to be tested.  The wilderness refers to an arid region in southern Israel between the fertile lands near the Mediterranean and the sands of the Sahara.  There is life there, but it hard to see and it is very isolated.  It’s not the kind of place any of us would naturally seek out.  Maybe Jesus wouldn’t have either, except the spirit led him there.  And I wonder if the physical setting wasn’t a big part of the test. Isolation forces us into interior places we would not go on our own.

Years ago, a friend and I drove from Los Angeles to Phoenix.  Somewhere in the beautiful, snow-capped Arizona mountains, I became acutely aware of just how far out in the boondocks we were.  We had not passed another car for a very long time.  All the radio stations had disappeared. Suddenly we crested one of those mountaintops, and there before us was the road down the mountain and across the valley - a straight and seemingly endless line to the horizon.  There was no sign of life: no humans or animals or telephone polls or electrical wires. I had never experienced such isolation, and so I asked my friend to stop so we could get out. We goofed around for a while and threw snowballs and yelled at the top of our lungs, just because we could.  But then we got quiet. And once we stopped making noise, I experienced the most profound silence of my life.  There seemed to be a weight to it, pushing me down toward the earth. And frankly, it really frightened me.  We were just out there in the midst of all of that nothing, exposed and unprotected.  After a while, I couldn’t stand it anymore. I insisted that we get back in the truck and drive, quickly, toward civilization.

I’m better with silence now, just not too much of it.  I find that when there is too much of it, then all of these interior voices that I try so hard to ignore suddenly have room to speak.  My doubts and fears and questions all swirl to the surface in a demand for my attention.  And I wonder if that wasn’t part of the test for Jesus.  Maybe in the silence of the wilderness, Jesus confronted those ideas that the noise of his world, and the business of his life, usually helped him to avoid.

And maybe it was in that quietness and in his swirling thoughts, that the devil appeared. Now don’t get caught in the trap of trying to imagine a little red man with horns.  The devil is far too crafty for that.  New Testament scholar N.T. Wright suggests that what was really going on here was “a string of natural ideas in Jesus’s own head.  (They were) plausible, attractive, and made… a lot of sense.”  And that is true to my own experience of temptation.  I have never seen the devil, but I have been bedeviled by my thoughts. And those thoughts are often plausible and attractive and make a lot of sense. That’s what makes them so tempting. They often appear to be justified and logical; that is until we get underneath them and understand our motivations and what fears are being played upon.

So the devil came to Jesus with three very natural human desires. The first was the temptation to satisfy his hunger. After 40 days of fasting, Jesus must have been famished.  And so, it was a most natural instinct to look at a stone and perhaps hallucinate what it would be like as a loaf of bread.  And the voice in his head said, “If you are God’s Son, then turn that stone into a chewy focaccia.”  And Jesus struggled to understand his own motives and the fears that underlay them and finally muttered: “One does not live by bread alone.”

The next temptation was about his need for excitement and the stroking of his ego. Jesus was shown all the glittering kingdoms of the world, with their wealth and power. And Jesus wrestled with his priorities.  And Jesus, remembering all the things his blessed mother had taught him, finally shouted into the wind: “Worship God only.”

And then the devil quoted the Bible. And we should all make a note of that. The devil whispered, “It is written that the angels of God will protect you.  So throw yourself off the pinnacle of the Temple and let Gabriel catch you.”  And that was the temptation to prove who he really was to all the doubters.  But Jesus clutched his head and groaned: “Don’t put God to the test.” And with that, we are told, Jesus passed his test. And in passing the test, Jesus gained what he did not have before: the essential skills needed to face the biggest test of his life or any life.

All of these temptations – in fact, all temptation is really only about one thing: Distrust.  Distrust.  The devil was sowing seeds of distrust.  “You better do this yourself, Jesus.  You better look out for number one because no one else is going to do it.  You better grab the brass ring.  You better use everything you’ve got to get all you want.”

And if all temptations are really the temptation of distrust, then Jesus’s tests and temptations are mine as well: to see faith as a weakness, to see trust as dependence, and to insist on taking charge of everything.  Instead of grabbing hold of God, we grasp for the illusions of control.  Jesus was about to have no control over what the forces of religion and politics were about to do to him.  But he still had his trust in God.  No one could take that from him.

And that is, at least in part, what these 40 days of Lent are about.  We quiet down and pause to remember that our own illusions of control are just that: illusions.  In Lent, we are called to plce our trust wholly upon the Lord.  This is the way of the Cross – the cruciform life, and we all walk it whether we want to or not.  But here’s the thing that Jesus found out, and here’s the thing we all find out: deserts and temptations and crosses and tombs are never ever how our stories end.  The God we trust sees to that.

Thanks be to God.  Amen.

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SHINY, HAPPY PEOPLE

3/3/2019

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Transfiguration Sunday, March 3, 2019
First Congregational Church of Cheshire
© the Rev. Dr. James Campbell

Luke 9:28-36

Now about eight days after these sayings Jesus took with him Peter and John and James, and went up on the mountain to pray. And while he was praying, the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became dazzling white. Suddenly they saw two men, Moses and Elijah, talking to him. They appeared in glory and were speaking of his departure, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem. Now Peter and his companions were weighed down with sleep; but since they had stayed awake, they saw his glory and the two men who stood with him. Just as they were leaving him, Peter said to Jesus, “Master, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah” —not knowing what he said. While he was saying this, a cloud came and overshadowed them; and they were terrified as they entered the cloud. Then from the cloud came a voice that said, “This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!” When the voice had spoken, Jesus was found alone. And they kept silent and in those days told no one any of the things they had seen.

As a child, I believed that all the miracles of the Bible happened exactly as they are described.  And that belief was easy to sustain, because I was a child.  But it got harder as I grew up, as I was exposed to science and philosophy, theology and anthropology, history and comparative religions.  And so, it was that over time my ideas about miracles morphed and changed.  I still believe that God acts in the world, sometimes in ways that defy easy explanations. But I also have come to believe that the point of a miracle is very often not actually the miracle itself.  The Bible refers to the miracles of Jesus as “signs.”  That is, they point us to something beyond the mere reporting of strange facts.  They point us back to God and to ourselves

Now making that connection is easier to do with some miracles than with others.  For example, when we speak of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, we may not completely understand what happened that first Easter morning, but the message of the miracle is loud and clear: God’s love is stronger than anything – including death. Likewise, when he read that Jesus took one boy’s lunch and fed 5000 people with it, we may not know exactly how that happened, but we see clearly God’s concern and care for our physical needs: food, shelter, community. When Jesus heals a leper, we may not understand that physiologically, but we connect in powerful ways with our own yearnings for health and social acceptance.

But what about the Transfiguration of Jesus?  Where do we see ourselves in a glowing Jesus on a mountaintop?  How is that event a sign – pointing us toward God and ourselves?

The Transfiguration is reported in all three of the synoptic Gospels: Matthew, Mark and Luke.  Some details differ in each, but the main point is the same: Jesus was transfigured in a blaze of glory.  -- Luke tells his version like this: about a week before the Transfiguration, Jesus had told his disciples that he would suffer and die.  Nobody wanted to hear that news.  And so, when Jesus asked Peter, John and James to go away and pray with him, I suspect they welcomed that opportunity with open arms. Maybe, they thought, Jesus would explain what he meant.  Maybe they could change his mind.

And so, they climbed a mountain in order to escape the crowds. While Jesus was praying, his face changed and his clothing became dazzling white.  Then Moses and Elijah appeared and engaged Jesus in a conversation about his impending death.  Upon seeing such a sight, Peter exclaimed that they should build some shrines to memorialize this wondrous event.  The icing on the cake was a cloud that suddenly descended upon them, while a voice announced: “This is my Son, the Chosen; listen to him!”

And then, quite typical of a miracle, it was all over before they could even begin to comprehend it.  This left them frightened and confused. Luke reports that: “they kept silent and in those days told no one any of the things they had seen.”  Well, why on earth would they? What do you say about a glowing Jesus?

So what could this event mean?  One of the most common interpretations is to emphasize the appearance of Moses and Elijah as representatives of the Law and the Prophets, and thus a continuity of God’s revelation through the Jewish people. This three-way conversation on the mountaintop seemed to confirm that Jesus fit into divine history in a unique way.

Others take that thought further by proposing that the appearance and then disappearance of Moses and Elijah actually signified their diminishing importance.  While in the past God’s people were to obey the law and heed the prophets, in the coming of Jesus God’s new commandment was simply to “Listen to him.” But taken to its logical conclusion, this kind of thinking has led to some truly dreadful persecution of the Jews by the hands and at the indifference of Christians who assume themselves to be spiritually superior.

Other scholars see this story as a literary device.  They are quick to point out that this tale is not that out of the ordinary for the ancient world.  Mountains and clouds were often seen as places where the gods dwelled.  Remember, Moses went up to Mount Sinai to receive the Law. The Greek gods were said to live on Mount Olympus.  And later some of the Roman gods were thought to spend time there as well.  So, they say, maybe Luke was using a common cultural myth to make a point about the divinity of Jesus.

Finally, perhaps the most common explanation is also the simplest.  Maybe the Transfiguration was God’s way of visually demonstrating that Jesus was different, special, chosen. Transfiguration is the visual proclamation about who Jesus is.

But no matter which of these you accept, we are still left with a strange story that seems to have little application to us.  And we are still left wondering where we might be found in the details. And I am left wondering if there is any transformative power for James Campbell, or for any of you, or for the ministry of this church, in the story of a glowing Jesus on a mountaintop.

Well, actually, I think there is. In my reading, I came upon the musings of Episcopal priest Adam Thomas, who also wondered about where we might connect most powerfully with this story.  And Thomas suggests something a little radical, a little out of the ordinary, but intriguing.  Perhaps, he writes, this story is not only about how Jesus looked as he was transfigured. Maybe it’s also a story about how we look – not to ourselves, but to God.

Now, we look at ourselves and what we see is our weaknesses and our sins and our secrets.  We see bodies that age and become frail and sick and die. But God, we are told, planted the divine image in each and in all.  There is in you and in me something of the divine DNA.  Scripture proclaims this.  And so, when God looks at us, God sees part of God’s own self. God looks at us and we are luminous with the possibilities for goodness and grace and transformation. Maybe that is what St. Paul meant when he exclaimed: It is “… Christ in (us), the hope of glory!” Colossians 1:27.

And I think that the practice of seeing ourselves from God’s point of view might be a really interesting Lenten discipline.  What if in the confessing of our sins, we could imagine that each word of confession rubs a little more tarnish off our inner glory? What if in acts of Lenten charity and justice, we opened our eyes to see the blazing glory of God in everyone else - especially those we hate?  What if the silence of Lent, we dared to listen to the voice of the One who knows us best, saying: “You are my daughter.  You are my son.  You are chosen and beloved.  And believe it or not, you shine.”

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"More than a proper church, I want a Prodigal Church, running into the world with wasteful gifts of love and mercy and understanding and justice."

A PRODIGAL CHURCH

MOTHER JESUS

LED RIGHT INTO THE MIDDLE OF TEMPTATION

SHINY, HAPPY PEOPLE

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